Healing Dean Winchester Is Hard
by shanroge350
Summary: Dean has given a bad angel full control of his brother's body, the angel killed Kevin, and Dean is left all alone. Even though Kevin is dead, he knows he needs to do something for Dean, so he contacts Castiel. Spoilers for S09E09 "Holy Terror" and my take on what *should* happen next.
1. Chapter 1

Dean Winchester stared at what was his brother with incredulity. He had never imagined he would screw up this bad. Now Kevin was dead. Their only hope at returning the rampaging fallen angels to heaven, getting Castiel's grace back, and their friend, Kevin Tran was dead. As Gadreel in Sam's body sauntered out of the bunker with the tablets in his bag, Dean began to feel more and more hopeless, and more and more alone."Kevin?" he called out dejectedly, knowing full well only silence would answer as he stared at his friend's burnt out corpse on the floor. He only succeded in making himself feel worse.

* * *

"Am I dead?" Kevin the Reaper standing in front of him.

The solemn man nodded confirmation.

"But that means... Dean is all alone now. Sam, or rather the angel using his body left. Charlie is still in Oz. Cas won't go to him because he thinks it's too dangerous, and he won't be able to hear Dean praying because he has another angels grace. Not his own. I have to help him. I have to help Dean. He can't be on his own. Who knows what he'll do!" Kevin practically screamed at the Reaper.

"I can allow you one last day on earth, but only as a spirit. You may go where you wish, see and speak to who you wish, but after twenty-four hours, you must take your place in Heaven."

"Thank you. You can stick me back down there now. I need to see Castiel."

With a wave of the Reaper's hand, Kevin found himself standing in Dean's bedroom at the bunker. Dean himself was curled up on his bed, crying into his pillow. He had already burned Kevin's body, and he hadn't stopped crying since. He was all alone now. No one to help him. Kevin had never seen him this torn apart. He knew what he needed to do.

In the blink of an eye, Kevin stood among a small group of trees outside a grungy motel somewhere in Indiana. He didn't know exactly where, but as he gazed curiously at the motel, he caught sight of the trench-coated angel in one of the windows. Without really knowing how he got there, Kevin was suddenly standing inside the room where he had seen Castiel just moments before. Materializing quietly, he cleared his throat to get the angel's attention. Castiel jumped as the sound and turned to find Kevin Tran leaning against the small table that was stationed just under the window in the small motel room. "Kevin? What is going on? I thought you were at the bunker, where it's safe? How did you get here?" Cas growled in surprise. "Relax, Cas. Turns out the bunker wasn't as safe as I thought. After you told Dean that Ezekiel died in the fall, Dean kinda wen't nuts. He painted a sigil in the storeroom that was supposed to give Sam full control over the angel possesing him. I guess it didn't work because when 'Sam' came out of the store room, he came to find me. Now I'm dead and Dean is alone in the bunker." As Kevin recounted the story, Castiel felt more and more sorry for Dean. For not being there for him. Not helping. But it was too dangerous for him to be near his friend right now. Both Malachai and Bartholomew were trying to hunt him down. He was a beacon for the angels to follow right to Dean. He couldn`t put the man in danger. But Dean was probably hurt. Cas knew he had to see him. "Cas, Dean's real messed up about this. He needs someone who cares about him, someone he can trust. He needs you." And that was all it took. With the gentle whoosh of wings, Castiel disappeared and made his way to Dean.

* * *

Kevin stood silently by, invisible to his friend and the angel currently standing in Dean Winchester's bedroom. Dean's face was streaked with tears, his knees were weak and he looked like he was just hit by a train. He had jumped in surprise and in defense when he heard the whoosh of an angels wings. He was definatly not expecting Castiel.

"Cas." Dean uttered, in a voice almost below a whisper. But Castiel still heard.

"Ye, Dean. Kevin came to me as a spirit. I was told you were in need of a friend. I wish to be that friend." Cas said in his deep gravelly voice, full of sympathy for the dishevelled looking human in front of him.

Dean's legs suddenly gave out from under him, and the man collapsed on the floor in front of Castiel. In moments Cas was on the floor too, pulling Dean into his arms on hugging him tightly to the angel's chest. Dean knelt on the floor in the arms of his best friend, as Kevin stood to the side, watching silently. Slowly, as Dean tucked his head into the crook of Castiel's shoulder and wrapped his arms around the angel, letting his tears flow freely, Kevin was satisfieed that Dean would make it through. He knew Cas would help him, and Kevin had done a good thing. His Reaper appeared beside him, and with a nod, Kevin was taken to Heaven, where he would be at peace, reunited with his mother and his girlfriend after such a long time on his own.


	2. Chapter 2

The first week after Kevin died and Castiel came back to Dean, the two lived in the bunker in some semblance of domestic bliss. Dean, being plagued with nightmares began to ask Cas to share a bed with him. The angel's always seemed to soothe the hunter's mind. Castiel began to make it a habit of sleeping next to Dean because after all, even though he had a form of his grace back, it wasn't his, and so Castiel was still essentially, human and the warm body next to him comforted the angel when he missed Heaven just a little too much. It never progressed to anything more than the two of them pressed up against each other, cuddling in the small bed, and both men were fine with that.

Castiel almost always woke to an empty bed and the smell of fresh coffee or some sort of breakfast food wafting down the hallway and into Dean's room from the kitchen. He hadn't known there were so many types of breakfast foods until Dean started to cook for him. Oatmeal, english muffins, pancakes, waffles, and even fruit salad had all made their way from a plate made up by a human, into the stomach of the angel in that first week.

The two men had slunk around the house, doing chores and research, trying to keep each others minds off of the angel war and the related events. And it worked for awhile. Dean and Cas would shuffle around the bunker, enjoying each others company, laughing and joking, sleeping together and sharing meal times. At least until Malachai all but blew up Manhattan.

* * *

Dean had been curled up on the couch, Castiel beside him, flicking through the channels on the flat screen in the living room of the bunker when he came across a news channel shoing footage of a disaster in Manhattan. At first he thought he was watching some kind of alien horror movie or something until a female reporter came on voiceover saying "It seems this large chain of explosions were set off from a single point. A team of twelve young people set off a bomb in an old hotel in lower Manhattan. They were seen coming out of the ruined building with supposedly not a scratch on them, and then are said to have simply dissapeared." The footage on the television looked as if someone had caught it on a cellphone, but Castiel could clearly see that it was Malachai and a group of his cronies that were emerging from a smoking and crumbling hotel.

"That- That's him." He said, sitting straight up and turning to face the hunter next to him. "That's Malachai. Malachai blew up half of New York."

"Malachai?" Dean asked, curious at the look of shock and terror that mingled on the angel's face.

"He's the angel who tortured me. Bartholomew's newest enemy. He's not exactly a nice guy. Just as bad as Bartholomew, maybe worse."

"We gotta stop this dickface. Right now." Dean jumped up off of the couch and went into the library, pulling book after book on angels off of the shelves. "We don't have the angel tablet anymore, but we still have most of kevin's research. We might be able to slow him down a little even if we can't stop him."

Castiel followed quietly behind Dean as he ran about the room, tossing books haphazardly across the table in the middle of the room, on top of Kevin's research that neither of them had had the heart to clean up in the last week. "Are you sure this is a good idea Dean? Neither of us is prepared to fight an angel at nearly full power right now. We haven't been hunting in more than a week, and we don't even know where he is. We could both be killed, Dean."

Dean stilled at Castiel's words. "I know we haven't been out in a while, Cas. This is a chance to get back at it. Maybe we can even find Sammy while we're at it. I need to do this Cas. It's what I do best, if you hadn't noticed. And lucky for us, Charlie rigged the map table to track angels before she left with Dorothy. I just have to turn it on. So we _can_ find out where Malachai is."

"Alright Dean. That's one problem solved. But how do we stop Malachai even if we do find him?" Castiel asked hesitantly.

"I don't know, Cas. That's what the books are for. Go look through them why don't you? I'll see if I can get the map table working." And with that Dean turned his back on the angel and walked out of the room.

Castiel sat down at the table in the middle of the library, pulling a book from the top of the pile in the middle of it, and began to read while his hunter fiddled with the controls along the wall in the next room.

* * *

Hours later, Dean gave a shout from the control room. A loud, resounding "YES!" This is what woke Castiel in the library. He had dozed off some time ago while in the middle of a book that told of how to trap angels, something they already knew how to do. He thought that maybe this book could tell him of some new way to do it, or how to trap them permanently, but had no such luck.

But when Dean shouted in triumph from the control room, Castiel jumped from his seat. The table in the middle of the control room was lit up like a Christmas tree with yellow lights, most of them concentrated in two areas of the US. It looked like there was a cluster of about 800 angels somewhere in the south eastern part of Nevada, and another bunch of approximately 1000 in the northwest corner of Ohio. "There, and there" Dean said pointing to the two clusters of light when Cas joined him to lean over the blinking table "are our best bets at finding and taking out either Bartholomew or Malachai."

"Dean, I hope you know that if we take out one of them and the other finds out, they will take Heaven for themselves. If and when they find out how to get back to Heaven anyways." Castiel reasoned.

"I know, Cas. But neither of them have any more of an idea as how to how to reverse Metatron's spell than we do, so we'll deal with whichever one comes first, and then we'll deal with the second one. Okay?" Dean looked desperately to Castiel for confirmation.

Cas nodded. "Both sides want me Dean. If we go in together, I put you at great risk. are you sure you want to do this?"

"Of course, Cas." Dean said. "I need you with me on this one man. I can't do it without you."

"I am with you, Dean. Always." Castiel responded. The blush that rose to Dean's face was a perfect reward. "But we need another way to kill them than an angel blade. There's no way to guarantee that either one of us will be able to get close enough to Malachai or Bartholomew to use one."

"Well then, let's do some research."

Cas and Dean walked back into the library together and sat back down at the table, Dean reaching for Kevin's remaining translations of the angel tablet, Cas picking up the book he had fallen asleep reading. They sat there together, reading in silence late into the night, and both fell asleep at the table.

* * *

The next morning Dean woke up with a headache and left Cas in the bunker to go for a drive. Cas woke up to find the bunker entirely empty of life except for him, and freaked out. He called Dean incessantly, leaving messages on all of his phones. Dean refused to pick up while he was on the highway. He needed to think and being around Cas really didn't help. After the fifth call from the angel, Dean pulled over and put all three of his phones in the trunk of the Impala, where he couldn't hear them.

There was no way he was going to live through this hunt. He or Castiel.

_And maybe that's the whole point of doing this. _Dean thought as he drove down a dirt road.

_It's not like there's anything left here for me._ And there wasn't. Not really. He knew getting Sam back was nearly impossible, Charlie was in Oz and who knew when or even if she was going to come back, Kevin is dead, Bobby is dead.

_The only thing left for me on earth in Cas._ And he was probably going to die in the fight too. Castiel has another angel's grace in him, he definately is not at full power, and he's wanted by both sides of the angel war.

_We both die, I go to Heaven, Cas goes wherever angels go when they die._

But there was just one little problem with that thought. Dean didn't want Castiel to die. He didn't want to never be able to see his angel ever again.

_Jesus when did I start thinking of him as "my angel?"_ He didn't know. But it made sense. They had a "profound bond" as Cas called it. They were inexplicably linked.

_If I die, then I want to be with Cas when it happens. If I have to die, I want to die with him there._ Well that was an odd thought. Dean had just gone from basically suicidal to genuinely sentimantal.

_I should call him._ Dean pulledd over to the side of the road, and opened the trunk to find his ringing cell phone. It was Cas. Of course it was. The poor angel was out of his mind with worry.

"Hey, Cas. Look man, I-"

"DON'T YOU 'LOOK MAN' ME DEAN WINCHESTER! I HAVE BEEN WORRIED SICK ABOUT YOU. YOU BEEN GONE FOR HOURS! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?" Cas yelled into the phone when Dean picked up.

Dean moved the phone away from his ear a little. Damn, the angel could yell. _I wonder what he would shout like that in-_ Oh no. There was no way Dean was thinking about that. No way in Hell. _Goddamnit, I'm fucking straight! _

"Cas, just hold a minute okay? I'm out on some dirt road in the middle off the main highway away from the bunker. Just calm down a little. I needed some time to think, so I went for a drive."

"Damn it, Dean. Are you okay?" Cas sounded a little shell shocked. Like he thought Dean had been abducted or something. The bunker was prety much non-existant to the rest of the world. The only other person besides the two of them who knew about it was Gadreel, and he was long gone.

"Yeah, Cas. I'm fine. I'll be back soon. I'll bring lunch. Just stay put."

"I was worried about you, Dean. At least leave a note next time if you're not going to pick up your phone." And with that Cas hung up.

_Christ, that guy is confusing as Hell._ At least Dean had a little time on his own left before he had to face his angels wrath. _Maybe bringing him a burger will make him less likely to smite me. _Dean chuckled to himself at the thought.

* * *

The second Cas heard the front door close, he ran to the front room and tackled Dean to the floor in a hug, knocking the take-out bag from Biggerson's across the room and Dean's breath from his body.

"Dude, I wasn't gone that long!" Dean laughed after regaining his breath and trying to disentangle himself from Cas. But Cas was having none of it. He wrapped his arms tighter around Dean's torso.

"I was worried, Dean." he grumbled into the other man's shoulder.

The hunter chuckled lightly. "Well if you won't let me go, I guess I can't get you that burger."

Castiel lifted his head from Dean's shoulder and smiled down at the man on the floor beneath him. He crawled slowly off of the hunter and stood, offering his hand help the othe man up. Dean took it, and walked across the room to retrieve the take-out bag that had somehow been tossed across the room when Cas attacked him. "Come on, Cas. Let's go eat." Dean said, throwing his arm across his angel's shoulders and pulling him into the kitchen.


End file.
